


Grit and Apathy

by Onceyourempire



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Dave is emotional and apathetic at the same time it's a miracle, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-07
Updated: 2011-06-07
Packaged: 2017-10-20 05:22:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onceyourempire/pseuds/Onceyourempire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sburb was hard but Dave Strider didn't care. Dave never cared. He didn't know how to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grit and Apathy

**Author's Note:**

> I've always thought that Dave would have some serious emotional backlog issues to deal with in his life, since I'm a fan of Apathy Dave and Emotional Disconnect Dave. This is sort of my take on Dave in the future. It was written before Dave tries to break Bro's sword and before John finds the parents with Rose. Spoilers for the fates of the guardians.

Sburb was hard on them all.

When John found out his dad was gone- when John  **found**  his dad- Dave almost cried with him.

But he didn’t of course, because cool kids never cried. Bro taught him that.

Yeah. Bro. He didn’t cry for Bro either.

But basically, Sburb was tough. They all lost family, homes; hell, they lost their whole planet- but they fixed it. They didn’t get their guardians back but they got their homes and John got his Nana and Jade got her Gramps and Rose….Rose got the house to herself, finally. Dave got his apartment back, but he didn’t get Lil Cal. He told himself he didn’t want him back but sometimes he’d have flashes of memories of Bro throwing Lil Cal onto his head and Lil Cal chilling in the bathroom and he almost wanted him to pop out from around a corner with that freaky grin and crappy bling. It would have been terrifying but at least it would have been familar.

Dave didn’t have too much to connect him to the past. He had his tables still, his time mashers, but he didn’t use them. It didn’t seem right. He had his Bro’s sites, which he updated for kicks (with the exception of the porn site because that was just weird and not even level one ironic), and he had the damn smuppets which he refused to get near, and he had his swords. That was about it and that was all he needed.

The others seemed to have more than he did,but that’s because they went out and got more. They fixed the holes in their memories and fixed themselves, in a way. Dave was there for them through it all- he stayed up on the phone with Rose for hours, saying ironic things and listening to her psycoanaylsis babble but knowing that the babble was less for him and more for her. He sent cool things to Jade in care packages and he’s the only one who knew that John cried for two hours over his dad and still cried on his birthday every year.

Dave didn’t need fixing, or so he insisted. He was fine. Cool kids didn’t need to cry over their bros dying, didn’t need to remember the past, didn’t need to feel anything but awesome.

And he believed this for years. About five, if you want a number.

It took five years, but eventually all that not caring left a hole in him. A gritty, dark mess in his chest that ground on his nerves and gave him migranes in the middle of the night and made him stare at his hands for hours, feeling blood on them.

He knew that not caring was going to kill him but he kept on doing it because it was all he knew how to do. He went to college with his three best friends in the whole world, and was fine, always fine, and lived a spectacularly normal life.

If anyone noticed that he was starting to become more like Bro, no one said anything.

He threw himself into his sound mixing and sword fighting, becoming excellent at them both. He swept the ladies off their feet like it was no big deal and frequented record shops that no one had ever heard off. He started wearing a hat- not one of those stupid billed deals that his bro always wore, but more like a beanie. It made him look even cooler than before.

No one said anything when he started wearing fingerless gloves.

No one said anything when he refused to take off his shades, even at night.

No one said anything because they figured Dave was fine. Dave was fine, always fine, always would be, so there was no need to worry, right?

But the gritty hole got bigger as not caring became easier and harder at the same time.

Dave was about nineteen when apathy became too much.

He was in one of his classes, the history of some shit and something boring, when he looked down and saw John’s derpy head on his desk. Sleeping, as usual. Didn’t he ever sleep at night?

Then he was suddenly struck with a thought.

John’s dad was dead.

Forever.

Yes, he knew it and had known it and John knew it but even though he was dead John was sleeping on his desk like he always did and he was being his normal dumb self but his dad was  _dead_. John’s dad who Dave always wanted to meet in an ironic way but ended up meeting after his body was ripped apart and he was standing next to John who was sobbing then but now John was just sleeping so peacefully.

And Rose’s mom was dead too and Jade’s dog and Bro.

Bro was gone and right now he was dressed like a cooler version of Bro but Bro was dead and when he died his blood was spilled everywhere and he had left the apartment so empty without his huge persona filling the spaces and the corners and the cobwebs and he would never ever come home and tell Dave that he was proud of his new mix or that he had managed to actually land a hit on him this time or that he fucking looked like him now.

And the world had been gone for a long time there and his future self had been a martyr and given himself up to be his sprite and then died and his whole life was different now but he acted like nothing had ever changed when everything had.

That big gritty hole in Dave, that mess where he didn’t care suddenly imploded, leaving a huge ball of **something**  right there. It was bright and it burned and Dave was suddenly finding it very hard to breathe and all he could see was Bro on the ground and his hands covered in Bro’s blood like he had been the one who had stabbed him and ripped him out of the living world into someplace new and unknown.

“Mr. Strider? Can you stop being  _ironic_  for a minute and pay attention?”

Fuck him, Dave thought with more anger then he had felt in a very long time. Fuck him and fuck this class that I only took because I needed a history credit and John was in it. Fuck this school and fuck sitting here.

“Mr. Strider?”

Dave stood up and grabbed his bag.

“ _Screw you_.”

And with John’s concerned eyes on his back, he flash-stepped the hell out of there.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

John was obviously still in class, so Dave had their dorm room to himself. He locked the door and all the windows and threw the curtains closed and curled into a ball on his bed. He didn’t think or cry or anything, just crunched himself there with wide eyes and breathed harder than necessary while trying not to scream. His head pounded and his chest felt like it was being ripped apart and Dave felt stuck in some sort of time lock.

Maybe it was a minute but it could have been an hour later when a knock came at the door. To Dave, it felt like he was getting punched in the temple with the fist of an angry god.

“Go away.” Dave’s voice cracked and sounded higher than normal, and he wondered why.

“Dave? Dave, it’s my room too and I’m worried. Come on!”

“Go away Egbert!” He almost said please but he couldn’t do it. It was one word too many for him right now- even saying three words had seemed like a huge task.

“Dave, please!”

“No!”

There was a brief silence that almost soothed Dave’s aching head, before the sound of a key entering a lock made him tense up.

“I’m coming in?” John sounded unsure and maybe a little scared.

“Get out...?” Dave tangled his fingers into his own hair and pressed his forehead to his knees. Anything to seal himself off from the world outside himself. His voice lilted to match John's, like he couldn't form a voice tone on his own anymore.

“Dave?!” John sat on the edge of Dave’s bed, or so Dave assumed by the shift in weight. “Dave, what’s going on? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” The automatic response that Dave kept springloaded in his mouth for every event. He was always fine, fine fine fine fine fucking fine. It came out as a hourse whisper but Dave couldn’t care but he did care and what was caring anymore?

“What?”

“I said-” Dave uncurled himself and sat up, setting his teeth in a grimace and his fists on the bedspread, “– I’m fucking FINE!” His voice cracked and he snapped his mouth shut, rolling off the bed. He had intended to hit the ground on his feet but halfway through he decided that it didn’t matter and just fell onto the carpet.

“What the hell?! Dave, what is going on?!” John was at his side in a second, his hand on Dave’s arm.

Dave rolled his arm out of John’s reach and stood up shakily. He looked down at his hands, covered in his gloves, and saw Bro’s hands handing him his first sword when he was ten.

“Shit.”

“Da-”

“I’m going out.”

“What is up with you?!”

“Nothing man. Jegus, is this what having a mom is like? Back off, John.” Dave pushed his way out of the door on shaking legs and with trembling hands, ignoring the confused words of his best friend following him. The pulsing ball of feeling things made his vision blur and his head rush and Dave was thankful that he didn’t fall down any stairs on his way out.

It was raining outside like the sky intended to start another Noah’s Flood. This time it would Dave’s flood, his flood to wash away all these memories and emotions and things he just wanted to go away. The flood to wash away six years of not caring and bring back Bro and to drown Sburb before it even got made.

Soon, Dave was soaked but he was too busy trying to drown his emotions and his apathy at the same time to notice.

He eventually found himself a nice secluded bench in a drenched park and settled himself there. For all of a minute, he felt okay.

Then he looked up at the sky and started screaming. He didn’t scream words or thoughts or anything tangible- just screamed out all those years of sealing his heart away.

He was still screaming when Jade and Rose found him, but by that point he was punching trees and his hands were bleeding like a stuck pig.

After that day, Dave went back to normal.

John, Jade, and Rose kept an eye on him but he managed to convice them that he was okay and kept going as he had before.

But now instead of a hole he was left with a bundle of memories and pain and fear and a jilted sort of loneliness. His migranes continued and he kept on training and mixing and looking like Bro.

On the inside, he hadn't stopped screaming.


End file.
